Artist Statement | Range: A Prairie Study

I was born and raised in the Canadian Prairies, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. My photography career began by accident in 2002 while photographing the darker side of humanity in my other occupation. After nearly a decade of photographing people at their worst, I took his beaten up Canon 30D to Tofino. It was that weekend that, for the first time, I started seeing things differently through the viewfinder of my camera.

In 2011 two things happened in my life that altered my view of the world. I married my wife and my father passed away. After my father died, I packed up an old, beat up Canon 5D, a busted EF 20-35mm lens and drove from Vancouver to Winnipeg. During that cathartic drive, in the expanse of the Prairies, I found a part of myself that had been asleep for a long time. I started to realize the beauty in desolation and that no matter how hard we try to fight it, time is unrelenting and inescapable.

Fast forward two years, countless hours of mapping, equipment testing and farm road driving and what you have is a new set of images of own personal vision. This series of photographs represents Canadiana at its roots.

I have always had a strong connection to the past and I believe that only by understanding where you came from can you continue to grow. By using a modern digital sensor combined with a 40 year old ‘shift’ lens, a medium format film camera with a high resolution scanner, and the latest printing and mounting techniques, I am trying to bridge the gap between past with the present through these photos… in both process and presentation.

These photos represent a simpler time without 200 TV channels, iPhones, Twitter and Facebook. They represent a place where the skies move like a breath and the ground swallows what was once vibrant and alive.